Integrating blog content into classroom activities

[Lars Hasselblad Torres]

Hi :: I thought I'd post an exchange I'm having with Andy Carvin on 
another list here, as some may find it of interest --

***

ANDY :: THANK YOU for checking in with the students' work and for your 
encouraging remarks -- I have passed along your comments to the 
'trekkers.' (By the way, when folks reply, in general I appreciate your 
anecdotes and experiences more than pointers to websites).

Before I get back to the question of how to integrate the content 
generated through a blog into classroom activities, I wanted to share a 
few observations on the use of the blog during an experiential learning 
activity (such as our trip to India).

First, I found that blogging serves as a wonderful reflective activity for 
the group.  Once we had located a nearby internet café, we built a stop-in 
into our daily routine.  While students were also allowed to check 
personal email, they were required to do a little expository writing on 
some dimension of their experience in India.

The second thing I learned was that our evening and morning "check-ins" 
were that much richer from the benefit of students doing a little 
processing of their feelings, experience, knowledge on the blog prior to 
sharing it in a group process.

Finally, the experience students were having in India was so foreign to 
many of their classmates back home, it was difficult for trekkers to come 
to any meaningful exchange of ideas with their classmates in the absence 
of some kind of structure back home.  For next year, I will try and find 
one teacher at each of the participating schools who will be willing to 
test building the blog into their social studies, history, or related 
course.

Now on to Andy's great thoughts:

> I've been very eager to have a conversation on this list to discuss
> ways that blogs can be used in an academic setting, whether for
> journaling, multimedia portfolios, for sharing lesson plans, etc.

Having experienced the results (impact on fellow students, friends, 
faculty and HS staff -- they loved the blog) of moderately successful 
blogging, I am convinced that we can do it better next year, i.e. 
Integrate photography, sound, maybe a video clip or two.  Of course this 
will take lots more planning, but I think with the students of this year's 
trek as a resource we can make the demands of "vibrant" or "rich" blogging 
apparent to students and, with a little training, they'll pick it right 
up.  I know that from my experience this year, the blog had little cache 
with the students until they actually arrived and they had something to 
say, and there were people 6,000 miles away they wanted to say it to.

> In the case of your students, their writings seem like the tip of an
> educational iceberg. Whether it's creating online portfolios comparing
> Indian youth culture with American culture, or the fight w/ Coca Cola
> in Kerala and the relationship between globalization, poverty, water
> rights and the environment, you've got a lot of rich ideas to work with.

I think you are right.  As an out of school instructor, the onus is on me 
to really make strong connections with classroom teachers and understand 
their lesson plans for the coming months.  I know that, in general, the 
teachers really want to find lesson content in the humanities that 
"resonates with relevance" to students, and something like their blog 
entries is really just a portal.  So as you point out, there are numerous 
facets to the experiential learning that can be built upon.

Some immediate ideas--both technology dependent and independent--that come 
to me are:
- Using blog entries to provide text for a photoessay
- Teachers select a blog entry to develop into an well-rounded essay
- Blog entries used as primary resource for a journalistic article about 
the forum, experiences, etc -- identify angles for internet research
- Use the blog as source material for skits around cross cultural 
communication and other kinds of situations

>Blogging in itself may be a fad, but the notion
> of individuals as producers of original ideas worthy of international
> distribution is here to stay thanks to the Internet, so what can
> educators do to capitalize on it?

I think that's the rub! I think it would be kind of cool to develop some 
kind of syndication network of students using blogs as "adventure 
learning" technology, which is to say drawing upon out-of-classroom 
experiential learning activities to produce the primal matter of learning, 
which can be refined under the "laboratory" conditions of the classroom.

Peace,

Lars

On 1/29/04 4:04 PM, "Andy Carvin" <acarvin at benton.org> wrote:

> --- In wwwedu at yahoogroups.com, lars hasselblad torres <lars at t...> wrote:
>> Hi :: I've just returned from India with an amazing group of high 
school
>> seniors who attended the world social forum
> (http://www.wsfindia.org) and
>> the intercontintental youth camp (http://www.wsfindia.org/youthforum).
>> While in India, students used a blog to share their experiences with
>> students and family back home.
>> 
>> I wonder if folks on this list have some ideas on how, now that they 
are
>> back, they can integrate this content into classroom projects?
>> 
>> 
>> You can visit the blog at <http://tagstudio.net/mumbai/mt>
>> 
> 
> Hi Lars,
> 
> First, I'd like to congratulate you and your students for their
> reporting; I really enjoyed following their adventures on their blog.
> I think they've been very eloquent in their postings, and there's a
> lot of meat contained there that could be used in the classroom.
> 
> I've been very eager to have a conversation on this list to discuss
> ways that blogs can be used in an academic setting, whether for
> journaling, multimedia portfolios, for sharing lesson plans, etc. In
> my particular case, I've used my Waste of Bandwidth blog
> (www.edwebproject.org/andy/blog/) to chronicle trips to places like
> Dubai, Oman and Geneva for WSIS-related meetings. And in my
> experimental photo.spotlight blog (www.edwebproject.org/spotlight) I'm
> exploring how blogs can be used to create virtual photo galleries.
> 
> On my return to the US from my recent trips, I've put together image
> galleries -- for example, www.edwebproject.org/oman-dubai -- but I
> haven't taken a crack at adding anything as specific as lesson plans.
> However, it wouldn't have taken a huge amount of work to have produced
> materials to help teach students, for example, about the UN, the role
> of world summits for international policymaking, and the tension
> between national sovereignty and multilateral cooperation, etc. Or in
> the case of my photo exhibit on the forts of Oman, it could have been
> used as a learning opportunity for students to explore the history of
> trade in the Persian Gulf, and how the lessons of trade and
> colonialization from hundreds of years ago relate so much to world
> geopolitics today. (Exploring questions like why were these forts
> built? Who were they trying to keep out? Why was Oman seen as a
> valuable and strategic target for empires like Portugal? What's Oman's
> position in the world today? etc)
> 
> In the case of your students, their writings seem like the tip of an
> educational iceberg. Whether it's creating online portfolios comparing
> Indian youth culture with American culture, or the fight w/ Coca Cola
> in Kerala and the relationship between globalization, poverty, water
> rights and the environment, you've got a lot of rich ideas to work with.
> 
> So at one level, I could see your students using their writings/photos
> as fodder for more detailed research and publishing projects.
> (blogfolios, anyone?) At the same time, I'm interested in the
> potential of blogs - both student and teacher generated -- as being
> fodder for lesson plans as well. For example, could your students team
> up with the help of an educator to create an online lesson about
> India, technology and globalisation? Or comparing notions of poverty
> in India and how poverty is understood in the US?
> 
> I think there are a lot of rich educational opportunities that can
> come out of blogs; I just don't feel like I've been able to think it
> through as of yet. So I hope others on the list are as interested in
> this subject as I am. Blogging in itself may be a fad, but the notion
> of individuals as producers of original ideas worthy of international
> distribution is here to stay thanks to the Internet, so what can
> educators do to capitalize on it?
> 
> thanks,
> ac

<p>
-- 
Lars Hasselblad Torres
Program Coordinator
Montpelier to Mumbai (²M2M²)
202-549-8346

http://tagstudio.net/mumbai

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